The movie, like the era, ain't all it's cracked up to be.
Suburbicon, the new dark comedy directed by George Clooney, attempts to examine truths about suburban living in the 1950s, to remove the view that it was a wholly gentle, nice, loving, utopia. It attempts to do this in a dark, none-too-funny comedy filled with intrigue, murder, and racism. Written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen and Clooney & Grant Heslov, it is a troublesome film that rarely manages to be quite as clever as one wants.
It all does start out amusingly enough, with a video advertisement touting the wonders of the Suburbicon community, thereby perfectly transporting the audience back to the film's 1959 setting and offering up a little bit of cheek. However, once the video ends and the audience experiences the reality of the situation, things are quite different. Seldom is the film ever as engaging as it is during that opening and the town itself is instantly shown to be less wholesome than the ads would have one believe.
As the movie ventures inside Suburbicon, those watching it see the troubles that are bubbling just beneath the surface begin to rise up, although perhaps not as one might expect. The town itself is in upheaval due to the fact that the newest family in the area, the Mayers (Karimah Westbrook, Leith Burke, and Tony Espinosa), are African American, and while that is more than enough to tackle in a film, it is not the main subject of this one. Suburbicon is instead mainly about the Mayers' backyard neighbors, the Lodge family – Gardner (Matt Damon) and Rose (Julianne Moore); their son, Nicky (Noah Jupe); and Rose's sister, Margaret (also Moore).
An attack on the Lodge family by two mysterious men (played by Glenn Fleshler and Alex Hassell) inside their home one night illuminates an unraveling that had already been taking place. Without giving too much away, the Lodges are not the squeaky clean family they first appear to be; Gardner and Margaret, in particular, have some dark secrets. Poor Nicky has to come to grips with what this all means for him and his future, while every step Gardner and Margaret take just seems to make things worse for all concerned.
Sometimes children suffer in movies, but the way in which Nicky struggles here in Suburbicon is particularly off-putting. This is not a horror film, it is a dark comedy and there is little humorous (no matter how dark that humor might be) in the depiction of Nicky's increasingly precarious situation. From threats issued from within his family to threats from outside, he is put through the ringer.
Much of the dialogue and the jokes fall flat as well. Damon's Gardner, in discussing boarding school with Nicky, may perfectly hit the aloof portrayal of an old-school father. However, one gets the sense that the way he talks to Nicky about the decision and the boy's getting older is meant to read as funny, but it doesn't.
There are definitely moments, though, when Suburbicon does in fact hit the lofty heights at which it aims. Two of these feature Oscar Isaac as Bud Cooper, a claims investigator for an insurance company. Cooper knows that something is off in the Lodge house and his discussions with both Gardner and Margaret are outstanding. Isaac's energy in these scenes is the exact thing Suburbicon is so regularly lacking.
Throughout the movie, some of the elements are there to make something wonderful, but they never fully gel. Instead, the various pieces are simply placed alongside each other. This is true whether its parts of the story or something else. There are these great sets and costumes that evoke the period, as does the Alexandre Desplat music. There is the shiny exterior of the town combined with the darker truth of the place, including the ever-growing, and growing more angry, racist throng outside the Mayers' home, to which the movie regularly returns. There is Nicky's Uncle Mitch (Gary Basaraba), Rose and Margaret's brother, who has serious concerns about Nicky's well-being. A portion of the film's climax may be foreshadowed earlier, but still instantly pulls the audience out of the story wondering how it could possibly have occurred.
Whatever its shortcomings, the message that comes across during Suburbicon is that while the inherent racism in such a community might immediately condemn the new African American family as bringing about troubles like an increase in crime, such problems have in fact been there all along and have nothing to do with race. This is undoubtedly true, but it never feels examined. The movie is more interested in delving into the Lodges' lives than it is in looking at racism, almost making the racism in the town just a way in to tell a completely different story.
The Verdict
In its best moments, Suburbicon is the dark, truly funny examination of 1950s suburbia it wants to be. These moments, however, are all too rare and more often than not the story is just a flat Film Noir tale purporting to expose the evil that lurks all around us. There are perplexing elements throughout that don't quite work, including some with the child at the film's center. Beyond that, Suburbicon offers a cursory depiction of racism but never delves as deeply into it as it should, making it another missed opportunity.
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